Will Twitter Ban Donald Trump?

Twitter – the micro blogging giant – has banned several people on its social media platform for using certain language, hate speech, and for promoting terrorism. The social media company has never thought twice before banning the accounts of those people, but why it is so hesitant when it comes to the US President Donald Trump?

Twitter does not want you to know this

Recently, the US President has been alluding to the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea with the subtlety of someone who is alluding to the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea. One of the most recent example of this is his recent tweet that he wrote on Friday:

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” The tweet alone received 156,569 156,569 likes, 55,349 55,349 Retweets and 53,922 53,922 Comments. According to several people, this tweet is a violation of terms of service of the micro-blogging giant because the content talks about a possible war between the US and North Korea.

To this tweet, several users replied, saying “Hey @Twitter, is threatening nuclear war not a violation of terms of service?” Another user wrote, “Seems pretty clear that you can’t threaten mass murder via nuclear war, right @twitter? Asking for 7.4 billion friends.”

The tweet by the US President is actually an indirect violent threat but it is not hard to argue that it is a simple statement about the defensive readiness of the United States military. Even before, Trump has retweeted tweets that quote threats, which he made with his real live mouth, like the one where he said that North Korea can expect “fire and fury” if it threatens the U.S.

What are Twitter’s thoughts about this?

No one knows what is going inside the mind of the micro-blogging site. In an interview to Mashable, a Twitter spokesperson said, “We do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.” The spokesperson was asked whether the social networking site had thoughts on the most recent war games tweet of Trump or any general thought on whether politicians can use the platform to threaten violence against other nations.

However, there are several good reasons why Twitter would never ban the US President. According to Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times, the repercussions of banning Trump could be vast. He said, “As online services like Twitter become the world’s primary place for political dialogue, the rules they set up for policing political speech will have a wide-ranging impact — they could be used to ban not just billionaire presidents-elect, but also activists and dissidents across the globe.”

Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Manjoo in the same article that it would be very much a violation of the spirit of freedom of expression to not allow me to critique a union leader or a journalist or a president.

Nishtha Singh is a iStartup staff reporter who covers tech news, including review of devices, emerging startups, acquisitions, gadgets, Cars, Cloud, EVs, AR, VR, AI and more. Further, she is a reader, a tech-enthusiast, and a writer. Editor at Teenage Publishing and proof-reader at Evoque Publishing.